798 Art District
Two highlights from the galleries we visited (which was not even a third of the massive 798 Art District). The very first show was underground in an echoing dark tunnel--nobody was there to greet or receive visitors and everything was poorly lit, and we had to puzzle out the titles and artists of the unlabeled paintings for ourselves, but hey, that's where I saw these enormous Shu Jie paintings. Reminiscent of Charles Burns somehow--Skin Deep?:
Later I had the most bizarre spaghetti carbonara I've ever had in my life--it had Shittake mushrooms in it and the cream sauce was an oily, milky soup. Oh, right, I was so into Shi Jinsong's chainmail animal pelts hanging from the ceiling:
Then I discovered the mindblowing portraits of Zhang Xiaogang:
And my second-favorite cousin is now my favorite cousin, haha. As it turns out, she likes going to bookstores and art galleries, which none of my other relatives do, except possibly my dad, and we like the same kinds of paintings and for the same reasons--emotion and instinct. She wants to own a vineyard and study photography but instead she's studying to be a lawyer because life in China is hard and uncertain. I just, man. It bums me out.
Later I had the most bizarre spaghetti carbonara I've ever had in my life--it had Shittake mushrooms in it and the cream sauce was an oily, milky soup. Oh, right, I was so into Shi Jinsong's chainmail animal pelts hanging from the ceiling:
Then I discovered the mindblowing portraits of Zhang Xiaogang:
And my second-favorite cousin is now my favorite cousin, haha. As it turns out, she likes going to bookstores and art galleries, which none of my other relatives do, except possibly my dad, and we like the same kinds of paintings and for the same reasons--emotion and instinct. She wants to own a vineyard and study photography but instead she's studying to be a lawyer because life in China is hard and uncertain. I just, man. It bums me out.